Show of Evil

'Before I begin, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce, uh… my… m-m-my right and left, uh, left…' His speech was slurred and he was stuttering.

Vail leaned forward in his chair. What the hell was wrong with Yancey? he wondered.

'… one of this… this, uh…'t-t-this country's great p-p-prosecutors, and the m-m-man who… uh…'

Yancey stopped, staring around the room helplessly, blinking his eyes. Vail got up and rushed towards the end of the head table, but even as he did, Yancey cried out, 'Oh!', pitched forward over the lectern, arms flailing, and dropped straight to the floor.

Vail rode in the ambulance with the stricken DA, after first calling St Claire and sending him to find Yancey's wife, Beryl. Yancey was grey and barely breathing. The paramedics worked over him feverishly, barking orders to each other while the driver called ahead to alert the trauma unit and summon Yancey's personal physician to the emergency room. When they arrived, they pushed Yancey's stretcher on the run into the operating room and Vail was left alone in the wash-up room.

Almost an hour passed before Yancey's doctor came out of the OR. Dr Gary Ziegler, was a tall, lean man with a craggy, portentous face studded with sorrowful eyes. He looked perpetually worried and was not a man who exuded hope to those waiting to get news of a stricken loved one. He wearily pulled off his latex gloves and swept off his cap and face mask, then pinched the bridge of his nose with a thumb and a forefinger and sighed.

'That bad, Gary?' Vail asked.

Ziegler looked over at him and shook his head.

'I hope you have a lot of energy, Martin.'

'What the hell does that mean?'

'It means you're going to be a busy man. It's going to be a long time before Jack goes back to work - if he ever does.'

'Heart attack?'

'Massive cerebral thrombosis.'

'Which is what, exactly?'

'Blockage of a main artery to the brain by a thrombus - a blood clot. Specifically, it means the cerebellum of the brain has been deprived of blood and oxygen.'

'In other words, a stroke.'

'In other words, a massive stroke. He's suffering severe Hemiplegia - we can already determine that, his reflexes are nil. And I suspect he's suffering aphasia, although I can't tell how bad it is yet.'

'Translate that into simple English for me,' Vail said.

Ziegler walked to the sink and began scrubbing his hands. 'Paralysis down his entire left side caused by damage to the right cerebral hemisphere. A speech deficiency caused by damage to the left hemisphere. It could have been brought on by a brain tumour, atherosclerosis, hypertension, I can't be sure at this point. Right now we've got him stabilized, but his condition is poor and he's unconscious.'

'My God.'

'The fact that he survived the first two hours is encouraging,' Ziegler said. 'If he holds on for another week or ten days, the outlook will be greatly improved. But at this point there's no way of predicting the long-term effects.'

'What I hear you saying is, Jack could be a vegetable.'

'That's pretty rash,' Ziegler said, annoyed by Vail's description.

'It sounds pretty rash!'

'Well, nothing good can be said about a stroke of this magnitude, but until we can do an ECG, blood tests, CAT scans, an angiography, hell, I couldn't even guess at the prognosis.'

'Can I see him?'

Ziegler pointed to the door of the Intensive Care Unit.

'I'm going to clean up. If Beryl gets here before I come out, talk to her, will you? I won't be long.'

Vail looked through the window of the ICU. Yancey lay perfectly still with tubes and IV bottles attached to arms and legs, his face covered with an oxygen mask, machines beeping behind his bed. He was as still as a rock and his skin was the colour of oatmeal.

What irony, Vail thought. One of the biggest days of his life and his brain blows out on him.

A few moments later the lift doors opened and Beryl Yancey and her 30-year-old daughter, Joanna, accompanied by a uniformed policeman, stepped out. They looked dazed and confused and stood at the door, their hands interlocked, looking fearfully up and down the hallway. When Beryl saw Vail, she rushed to him, clutching him desperately, and chattering almost incoherently. He put his arms around her and Joanna. Beryl Yancey knew there were frequent skirmishes between her husband and Vail, but she and Jack Yancey both liked the tough prosecutor and were well aware that his stunning record had helped keep Yancey the district attorney for the past ten years.

'I was at the beauty parlour,' Beryl babbled. 'Can you imagine, the beauty parlour? Is he alive, Martin? Oh, God, don't tell me if he's gone. I can't imagine. I won't - '

'He's hanging on, Beryl.'

'Oh, thank God, thank you, Marty…'

'I didn't - '

'Is he awake? Can we see him? Oh, my God, my hair must be a mess. I was right in the middle of…' The sentence died in her mouth as she primped her incomplete hairdo.

'Gary Ziegler's just inside the emergency room. He'll be right out. He can give you all the details.'

'They came and got me in a police car. The whole beauty parlour got hysterical when that nice man… Who was that man, Martin?'

'His name's Harvey. Harvey St Claire.'

'He said he would wait for you in the car.'

'Fine.'

'You're not going to leave us, are you? Nobody would say anything, you know. Mr St Claire wouldn't tell me anything! I thought… Oh, God, I thought everything.'

'He doesn't know anything, Beryl. Harvey doesn't know any more than you do.'

'How bad does my hair look?'

'Your hair looks fine, Mom,' her daughter said, patting her on the arm.

'You know if you need anything, anything at all, just call me. At the office, at home…'

'I know that, Martin. But Jack's going to be all right. I know he'll be all right. He never gets sick. Do you know, he never even gets the flu?'

A minute or two later Ziegler came out wearing a fresh gown and the two Yancey women fled immediately to him. Vail took the lift to the first floor, but as he stepped out he saw a half-dozen reporters and a television crew clustered around the front door. He jumped back inside the lift and rode it to the basement. He took out his portable phone and punched out the car's number. It rang once and St Claire answered. 'Where are you?' he asked.

'The basement. There's press all around the front door.'

'I know. I'm looking at them as we speak.'

'I'm not ready to talk to the press.'

 'Follow the arrows to the loading dock on the back side. I'll pick you up there.'

'Right,' Vail answered, following an arrow down a long, dreary tunnel. Empty dollies with bloody sheets wadded up on them lined the walls. Several of the overhead lights were burned out. The narrow, depressing shaft smelled of alcohol and dried blood. He reached the service entrance and bolted through it, raced to the loading platform, and jumped to the ground as St Claire pulled up beside him. He got in the car and St Claire pulled out into the hospital driveway, then sped off towards the courthouse.

'What was it, heart attack?' St Claire asked.

 'Stroke. He can't walk, he can't talk, he's living on canned air, his brain has been deprived of oxygen and blood, and he's unconscious. When I suggested he might end up a mashed potato, Ziegler got edgy.'

'Wasn't a very professional diagnosis,' St Claire said. He spat our of the window.

 'I'm not a doctor.'

'No.' St Claire chuckled. 'You're the new DA.'

 'I don't have time to be DA,' Vail answered sharply. 'This is going to sound weird, but ever since this happened I keep thinking about the day Kennedy was killed, that picture of Johnson in the airplane taking the oath of office.'

'Passing of the mantle, Marty.'

'I'm not a hand squeezer and I'm too blunt in social gatherings. I don't want the mantle.'